What when you build a country as a Startup?
It’s not uncommon to think that cutting edge innovation resides in the hands of private enterprise and academia. After all their business models demand that they stay one step ahead of the competition, which has always brought new ideas and inventiveness to play. But what happens when you are able to start from a clean slate, when you have the opportunity to rebuild from scratch and when your ambition transcends the boundaries of a private organisation and reach as far as an entire state? We travelled north to the beautiful city of Tallinn to find out how, Estonia, the “Startup Nation”, came about and became the entrepreneurship and fintech powerhouse that it is today.
In our recent “unicorn safari” in Estonia we had the privilege to sit down with Erika Piirmets, Digital transformation advisor at E-Estonia to talk about how this economically progressive state rebuilt their nation on the platform of the future. In this chat we learn how Estonian pragmatism, commitment and evidence-first approach propelled this small country into a modern, forward driven Nordic nation with the most advanced digital state in the world and the highest global number of unicorns per capita (1:130,000 people) . This interview will make you shift your attention north and perhaps make a few changes to your upcoming travel plans.